Last Week’s PDM Activities Around the Country; A Phone Photo View

The NRM government fronts ICT and digitization as one of the 4 sectors than can drive development, alongside commercial agriculture, industrialisation and modern services. This is supported by Uganda’s high mobile phone penetration which is at 76.2% of the population, with 18.2 million Ugandans able to access smartphones by 2024. This capped with decentralisation which enables work to go on at the local governments and further down to the parishes has enabled to document PDM activities as championed by focal persons and parish leaders.

In this article, we take a look at some of the activities that happened in the last 7 days, captured by phone. Take a read!

1. SPEAR Training

An ongoing SPEAR training in Rukungiri District, Kigezi sub-region on Wednesday 29th June 2025

The State of Parish Economy and Asset Register (SPEAR) is a monitoring, coordination and reporting mechanism that enables the government to assess the progress of development per parish. This includes knowing things like the number of schools, roads, bridges in the parish, amount of PRF received, access to clean water to mention but a few. Being a fairly new initiative in our implementation, trainings are still on going countrywide, to equip implementors with the required knowledge so that they can provide accurate results when submitting their annual SPEAR reports.

District and Community leaders attending the SPEAR training in Rukungiri District

2. PTC Roll-out

Beneficiaries getting into hands-on training at the PTC of Kasenyi Ward in Mubende Municipality

Established by the PDM SACCO, the Practical Training Centre (PTC) is a hands-on training centre in the parish/ward. It incorporates principles of other proven models employed by agricultural extension workers such as the Farmer Field School concept to provide extension, business development and other advisory services to all who need them within the parish, especially PDM beneficiaries.

PTC sensitization meeting in Kizibawo Parish, Bukuya Sub-county, Kassanda District

Currently, sensitization is ongoing in the different parishes. The PTC provides support to PDM Beneficiaries and other interested community members on how they can invest their money in carefully selected enterprises to achieve socio-economic transformation at the Household level.

Budding maize in the food crop section of the PTC in Busaale South PDM Ward, Mubende Municipality

3. CBF Enrolment

Mr Kiwanuka Shimon, the in-charge of PTCs/CBFs in Butambala District engages community members on PDM

Just like the PTC, the Community Based Facilitators (CBF) are another initiative geared to improve PDM implementation. While some parishes have concluded their enrolment, the process is still on-going in other areas, with the target being 2 CBFs per parish. With majority being youth, the CBFs are trained by Local Government extension workers to increase government’s reach in provide demand-driven services to its people.

4. Beneficiary Selection and Preparation

Vetting of 100 PRF beneficiaries for FY 25/26 taking place in Gwatiro Parish, Budde subcounty, Butambala district.

Government moved to enforce community ownership and participation, cabinet approved LC1 village meetings, for the community itself to select the PDM beneficiaries who would later access PRF.

With more than 2.6 households reached by the PRF so far, this process is very critical for making sure the money goes into the hands of the right people as we continue to chase our target of uplifting all Ugandans into the money economy.

Other activities like PRF repayment, engging communities on the Musevenomics ideology, community engagement meetings and motor vehicle distribution to Local Government heads for monitoring of government programs were also successfully executed last week.

Townhall meeting for the Musevenomics ideology in Jinja City

We move into the new week with more inspiration to improve service delivery and promote socio-economic development of our country, through empowering our parishes.